Question

I’m making a tutorialsystem with Codeigniter, but I’m a bit stuck with using subcategories for my tutorials.

The URL-structure is like this: /tutorials/test/123/this-is-a-tutorial

• tutorials is the controller
• test is a shortcode for the category
• 123 is the tutorial ID (used in the SQL query)
• this-is-a-tutorial is just a slug to prettify the URL

What I do is passing the category as a first parameter and the ID as a second parameter to my controller function:

public function tutorial($category = NULL, $tutorial_id = NULL);

Now, if I want subcategories (unlimited depth), like: /tutorials/test/test2/123/another-tutorial. How would I implement this?

Thanks!

Answer 1

For reading infinite arguments, you have at least two useful tools:

• func_get_args()
• The URI class

So in your controller:

• Pop the last segment/argument (this is your slug, not needed)
• Assume the last argument is the tutorial ID
• Assume the rest are categories

Something like this:

public function tutorial()
{
    $args = func_get_args();
    // ...or use $this->uri->segment_array()

    $slug = array_pop($args);
    $tutorial_id = array_pop($args); // Might want to make sure this is a digit

    // $args are your categories in order
    // Your code here
}

The rest of the code and the validation depends on what specifically you want to do with the arguments.